Embarking on a first-ever mission trip to provide essential dental care to a community escaping turmoil has hopefully formed a long-term partnership with future plans to expand.
Mooroolbark’s Manchester Road Dental Surgery dentist Dr David Rivadillo joined eastern suburbs charity Sharing Hope on its most recent trip to the Thai-Burma border to provide aid, medical care and training.
Arriving home at the end of May, after a week-long stay in a refugee village in the Karen state, Dr David said it was an incredibly rewarding and eye-opening experience.
“Right now, Burma is still, unfortunately, in conflict, and it’s not safe at this point in time. The Karen people are still getting bombed in villages and there’s still fighting between the military and the Karen army,” Dr David said.
“Sharing Hope supports a school that’s across the border in Thailand, and the school teaches all the refugee kids, and the charity also supports the teachers there.
“This whole trip, the whole basis of it was actually to provide some training for those teachers, in terms of lesson plans and child safety.”
Having always wanted to utilise his dental training and contribute in a meaningful way overseas, when the opportunity arose through connections and conversations, Dr David said it felt right.
Volunteering already with the Ringwood Winter Shelter program, offering free dental checks to people experiencing homelessness, it was here he engaged with Sharing Hope director Gitta Clayton and plans evolved.
“This was the first dental program or dental mission trip for Sharing Hope, as well as for myself,” Dr David said.
Sharing Hope’s fundraising coordinator and projects support Caitlin Douglas said providing on the ground dental care differed from the standard programs but was extremely well-received.
“Generally we’re supporting local led and local run programs. So Sharing Hope supports schools and medical clinics and some dormitories housing displaced students on the Thai-Burma border,” she said.
“This program was a bit unique in that it was brought together around, I think we had 150 teachers from 10 different locations, and they travelled across the border into Thailand to join us.
“It was a unique opportunity to have David come along and be able to provide that care, because most of these teachers are coming from very remote villages in Karen state with very little infrastructure where roads, electricity, health care, are almost non-existent.”
Dr David said many of the people he saw had never accessed dental care, with the closest city an hours drive and even if they went, because of their refugee status, it was unlikely any dentist would see them.
Despite the apprehension of visiting a dentist being a universal feeling, Caitlin said with the support of nurse Alison from EACH, who was born in Burma and could communicate in the language, it provided comfort, reassurance and helped break the barriers.
With a basic set up of plastic chairs, a table and the dental equipment they could carry over, Dr David said they did the best they could with what they had.
“We just didn’t have the infrastructure to do a whole lot but we were still able to provide at the very least a few procedures,” he said.
Everyone received a dental health check, with Dr David able to provide fillings, pain relief and where required, tooth extractions.
“One of the patients there was just a young girl who’d been displaced because of the war, so she was sent over and her parents are still across the border,” he said.
“But this young girl, this poor girl, basically had dental abscesses associated with her teeth, and she’d been dealing with it for the last six months. As a result, she was eating properly. She’d apparently lost a lot of weight.
“A toddler shouldn’t be dealing with that. She’s very lucky she didn’t get hospitalised. We took care of the bad teeth that were there, and just made sure the dental abscesses healed properly for her and she can go back to normal.”
Dr David said had the abscesses not been treated when they had it could have been life-threatening for this four-year-old, as infection could have spread throughout her body.
“That was heart-breaking,” he said.
But being able to take away someone’s pain, Dr David said, was the most rewarding part.
“Just being able to utilise the skills that I have to obviously provide help and to these people who are in need of that, they were very grateful of the fact that I could get someone out of pain, and they’ve been dealing with that pain for for such a long period of time, just to see that relief in their face was really, really quite rewarding.”
Gitta said this was the exact feedback from the teachers and students who received care too.
“A lot of the patients that David had seen had said how grateful they were that they weren’t in pain anymore. The pain was gone. They were just so relieved,” she said.
Seeing the need first-hand, Dr David said “we barely touched the tip of the iceberg” and so he has plans to make dental care a priority for this community however he can.
“There’s like over 3000 kids in there. The majority of the patients who were treated were the teachers, the staff, so we looked after them, but then also saw some of the dorm kids.
“My bigger goal after this is really to go back and look after the kids who are there, and maybe go back when they’re in school and obviously help them out as much as possible.
“It’s going to require a bigger team, more donations and a lot more stuff and a lot more planning. Hopefully we can get back there ASAP and make it a yearly thing or even just every two years.”
Gitta said Sharing Hope would love to explore the possibilities of offering medical care, in whatever form, further.
“It’s something we do want to continue, and who knows what we might be able to do next time?”
Sharing Hope has been operating for 15 years, with the mission of “seeing hope restored for the Karen people”.
“It’s looking at locally led aid and eventually development, when the opportunity comes and practical support to remind the Karen people that we haven’t forgotten them,” Caitlin said.
As a country that has been in conflict for around 70 years, Gitta said many of the people feel as though they have been forgotten by the rest of the world.
“They do feel like they’ve been forgotten. They don’t understand why there’s no focus or inclusion of what’s actually happening over there,” she said.
“It’s hard to explain to them when we would also like something to happen. It’s just so unfair. You could talk to people up the street now, and people would have absolutely no idea of what’s going on.”
Seeing the conditions of how refugees in Thailand are living, Dr David said it’s “inspired me to do more” but that he thinks “we can all do a bit more”.
“Being educated about the situation there. It’s not really well publicised, and these people are suffering and no one really knows about it. It’s not in the media or anything like that. So just getting some awareness from that perspective will also go a long way.”
But of course, monetary donations to Sharing Hope make all the difference in supporting the aid and educational programs essential to the refugees escaping over the border.
“As always with charities, we’re always looking for donors to be able to assist the projects that are requested of us from our people who work for us over on the Thai-Burma border…most of its emergency aid at the moment but it’s money we need, most of all donations,” Gitta said.
This trip would not have been possible without a number of local donors, like the Park Orchards Lions Club, North Ringwood Dental and of course, nurse Alison, as well as all the volunteers who assisted Dr David in this mission.
To find out more about Sharing Hope, visit sharinghope.org.au
